October 18/06 10:26 am - Professional Cycling Association Speaks Out

Posted by Editor on 10/18/06

CPA News

The CPA (Professional Cyclist Association) has provided the following release, regarding their recent general meeting. The announcement concerns comments by the Association president - Francesco Moser - in a television interview, which appeared to criticize the anti-doping fight. The release goes on to urge various sports bodies to work together more effectively, and points out that the athletes are the ones hurt most by contradictory and inconsistent actions by authorities.

During its General meeting of October 14, 2006, which was held in the Grand Hotel di Como, the CPA put on the agenda the discussed declarations that its President Francesco Moser made during an interview with the television, which generated some speculations concerning the fact that himself, or through him the association of riders, emitted criticisms in relation to the anti-doping fight of the UCI, or even recommended the liberalization of doping.

President Moser's explanations were clear and convincing, so much so that the CPA is now convinced that all was instrumented, or in the best of the assumptions deformed by the media, creating a polemic which should not have been.

On the other hand the association of riders makes a point of reaffirming that itself and all the riders which it represents are contrary to any illicit and unsporting practice, so much so that the cyclists are the only ones to pour a contribution for the anti-doping fight - let us recall that a part of the prize money of the races of the professional tours are intended for the anti-doping fight, the riders being thus the only athletes in the world who pay for the antidoping tests - that they were the first who accepted the blood tests and even the controls in ones' home.

To want to attribute what the media wrote or told during the last weeks to President Moser or to the CPA is consequently deeply unjust and short of generosity.

The CPA seizes the occasion to invite all the authorities busy within the framework of the fight against doping, particularly WADA, the IOC, the UCI and the various national agencies to work with some more coordination and coherence, without rivalries which do nothing else but to harm the effectiveness and the credibility of the controls.

The CPA however requires once again that those authorities treat all the sports in the same way and that they control the other sports the way they do it for cycling.

That being known as, and in the light of the recent events, the CPA is forced to reiterate its opposition to the Ethical Code the Trade Teams Association (AIGCP) established, which recently showed how arbitrary, incoherent and inapplicable it is: some riders were prosecuted as if they were delinquents on the basis of nothing else than deductions, whereas some others, being the subject of procedures, continue to race.

If WADA, the IOC, the UCI and the various national authorities assigned to controls do their duty, cycling does not need arbitrary instruments, which instead of bringing solutions do nothing else but generating chaos and insecurity and, which is more serious, pillory and condemn riders without evidence, having no respect for the most fundamental rights of the personality.

To avoid such kind of problems and to get out of the prevailing confusion and suspicion, the CPA invites the AIGCP to remove of that ethical code all provisions and standards which make it possible for the trade teams to exclude from the team, or even only to suspend, riders arbitrarily on the only basis of suspicions or deductions. For everybody's comprehension and to avoid other situations of chaos, an unambiguous answer should be given before the very beginning of the next season.